Warning

The anti-Trump histrionics of the WaPo this Sunday know no bounds—a prime example being this de-facto opinion piece that inappropriately starts on Page One: American democracy is on a break. Welcome to ‘Trumpocracy.’ | Four new books capture Year One under President Trump — and assess his long-term impact on American democracy, By Carlos Lozada, January 18, 2018

This article, a review of four anti-Trump books, is so over the top it is beyond belief that any rational person could take it seriously. It contains many insane zingers, including this one:

Levitsky and Ziblatt [authors of How Democracies Die] note that democratic backsliding often occurs in the latter years of a duly elected presidency. “People do not immediately realize what is happening,” they explain. “Many continue to believe they are living under a democracy.”

In spite of author Lozada’s rantings, today’s edition isn’t a total loss–there are salient quotes about immigration in the article linked below.

You can see from these quotes and the political history of the last half century that for the Left and the Democratic Party identity politics “was for me, but not for thee”. The ultimate evil, enforced by not only by the left, but the conservative establishment, e.g. NRO.

Conservative activists have also been cheered by the dramatic shift in Republican focus, which has followed the White House’s embrace of nativist language that casts the standoff as a choice between government funding for “lawful citizens” and the “reckless demands” of “unlawful immigrants.”

“Even two or three years ago, you couldn’t have gotten away with being hard line on immigration,” said Ed Martin, a former chairman of the Missouri Republican Party who now runs Phyllis Schlafly Eagles, a group that advocates for immigration restrictions. “That wasn’t the position that was palatable to the Republican donor class and the establishment.”

I do wonder what “establishment” Ed Martin was referring to above. The Republican establishment, or the greater establishment? Or in reality, were they essentially one and the same?

The writers and the conservatives they interview reach the same conclusion Washington Watcher did–Trump has moved the immigration issue into the front of American politics.

But Trump proved in the 2016 election that immigration unified the GOP much more effectively than did its traditional focus on reducing entitlement spending, free trade and low deficits. Among the GOP base, the populist issues of trade and immigration are now far more animating than even abortion or taxes, Martin said.

“For the Republicans that’s helpful, because I have never thought that the populist movement would be able to understand the tax cuts as well as immigration,” he said.

Rick Manning, the president of Americans for Limited Government, agrees that immigration has become a front-burner question for the Republican base, and will likely prove decisive in GOP turnout this November.

“If Donald Trump signs a DACA deal, caves on this thing, on the one-year anniversary of his presidency, it ends his presidency for all intents and purposes,” Manning said. “There is no reason for the blue collar Democrats who voted for Trump last time to come out again.”

Former House speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), who led his party into the 1995 and 1996 shutdown over government spending, says Republicans have set up this confrontation as a midterm winner. The GOP will cast the Democrats as more focused on identity politics than the national interests, like funding the military, Gingrich predicted.

“This is a decision by the Democrats that their future absolutely requires them to polarize the Latino vote,” he added.”